The power of 'Live-vertising'

Connecting technologies with meaningful real-time physical experiences, or what I like to refer to as "Live-vertising," is not a new trend, but recently it's managed to find strong footing in our industry. It's something that I found repeating itself over and over again when scanning some of last year's best work. Live-vertising utilizes real-time online marketing stunts, often using the Internet as a viewing window, to broadcast to and engage the viewers. It's always about 'seizing the moment' which is what makes the Internet unique: the campaign lifespan can be anywhere from under 30 minutes to several days of participation. W+K Portland's Nike Chalkbot and Farfar's The World's Biggest Signpost are some of the campaigns that use these very simple mechanics of broadcasting a message and reinforcing a brand's mark within the digital space.

Now that live participation has become a strong commodity to generate consumer engagement, I think these ideas should not be defined by budgets. One of my favorite campaigns that demonstrates this is Samsung Shakedown, put together by From Stockholm with Love. I love this particular campaign because it's a very simple idea. The interface presented to the user highlights both product benefit and value for your involvement. It also had very limited production cost, but it still managed to create a wave of user participation. Given the fact that the general public is skeptical to advertising, we as practitioners are slowly learning that creating experiences with absolutely no reward exchanged for the consumer's time does not work in this space.

I often think we make simple things complicated, due to bad user experiences. It's not just about technology fueling ideas; it's about ideas fueled by user insight. And the best advertising is not advertising, it's something that aims on delivering a mutual experience between the audience and a brand.

Paul Collins is Group Creative Director at AKQA New York.